(Offered as RUSS 321, ARHA 321 and ARCH 320) Taking case studies from Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet history, this course examines monuments and memorials in literature, cinema and the arts. Focusing on specific episodes and case studies, we will consider the form and cultural politics of monuments and memorials, and especially how these objects become arenas in which conceptions of art, history, and politics are contested.
A course that examines the stories and novels of rebels, deviants, dissidents, loners, and losers in some of the weirdest fictions in Russian literature.
A half course designed for intermediate-level students who wish to develop their fluency, pronunciation, oral comprehension, and writing skills. We will study and discuss Russian films of various genres. Two hours per week.
Requisite: RUSS 301 or consent of the instructor. Offered Spring Semester. Visiting Professor Parker.
How to handle overenrollment: null
(Offered as RUSS 245, EUST 245 and FAMS 245). Are our screens really windows through which we glimpse other worlds? Or just mirrors reflecting our own preconceptions? Are they doors through which we enter new experiences? Or cheap frames for prepackaged content? The power of visual media to emancipate its users – or trap them – was first recognized in the cinema, from the earliest silents to the flourishing of classical sound film. Film has always been the great art of exile, produced by immigrants and cosmopolitans facilitating the circulation of images, identities and ideologies.
Continuation of RUSS 201.
Requisite: RUSS 201 or equivalent. Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Wolfson.
How to handle overenrollment: Amherst students have priority, then 5-college students.
Continuation of RUSS 201.
Requisite: RUSS 201 or equivalent. Limited to 12 students. Spring semester. Professor Wolfson.
How to handle overenrollment: Amherst students have priority, then 5-college students.
Who is to blame? What is to be done? How can we love, and how should we die? In an age when such larger-than-life questions animated urgent debates about self and society, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekhov and other writers whose famous shorter works we’ll read in this course reinvented the idea of literature itself.
This introduction to Russian culture and history examines Russia’s vast and varied contributions to world culture, from literature and the arts to intellectual and political history. Setting aside cultural commonplaces about Russia—from borscht to nesting dolls and vodka—and various clichés of Russia as some enigmatic, reason-defying civilization, this course considers Russia’s ongoing development as it responds to the world and fashions its own forms of art, culture, and thought.
Accelerated introduction to the contemporary Russian language, presenting the fundamentals of Russian grammar and syntax. Equivalent to both semesters of First-Year Russian. The course helps the students make balanced progress in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, writing, and cultural competence. Three meetings per week. Offered Spring Semester. Professor Parker.
Accelerated introduction to the contemporary Russian language, presenting the fundamentals of Russian grammar and syntax. Equivalent to both semesters of First-Year Russian. The course helps the students make balanced progress in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, writing, and cultural competence. Three meetings per week. Offered Spring Semester. Professor Parker.
Pending faculty approval.
